ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book considers how the law might undertake an ecological turn by reconfiguring how human beings interact with the biosphere, and particularly with vegetal life forms. It describes how plants came to be conceived as inventions, and, according to this logic, how the first laws that extended intellectual property to allow for the privatisation of particular plant varieties were developed in North America and Europe. The book explains how landmark international agreements, including the Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants Convention and the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement operated to consolidate and extend the instrumental approach to the governance of vegetal life. It analyses how the Ingenios Act sought to reconstitute the notion of the “plant variety” in a way that would take into account the interests of different human uses of plants in Ecuador.
